Need help in selecting a new PC

[tarana]

I need a faster PC for mainly video conversion, editting & scanning photos. I hardly use office products.

1. Will buying from Costco better & cheaper than getting it directly from Dell?

2. Does Dell dump their less popular/outdated models at Costco?

3. Does 1MB L2 cache versus 2MB make a huge difference?

I was looking at http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?prodid=11269506&whse=BC&topnav=&cat=4348&hierPath=84*56671*4348*&lang=en-US
and

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?prodid=11269672&whse=BC&topnav=&cat=4348&hierPath=84*56671*4348*&lang=en-US

 

[martinus2u]

never mind L2 cache. What you want is main memory and spindles. And fast I/O.
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[tarana]

Anyone else?

 

[lylejk]

Core two duo (quads not much better in performance based on blog views that I've read). XP uses less resources (more bang for your buck on memory use to boot), but if your only choice is Vista, then get 4GBytes. Since you are going to do video editing (and assuming a lot of video storage), get at least a 500GByte drive and partition it with 40G Primary and the rest for storage (only use your primary drive for OS/programs and document (minus picture) storage (unless you don't plan to take many pictures, then primary partition is fine for that too cause I don't think you will ever use all 40Gbytes in that case). Also, get an external 500GByte drive for backup (note; it's not a backup unless you have duplicate data storage. I have to say this since customers have, on more then one occasion, said that they backed up their data on an external drive that crashed and cannot get their data (i.e., they transfered their data to an external drive and erased it from their primary). Your external drive must be partitioned as NTFS (FAT32 has limitation on file size which may be an issue if your video file exceeds that size; don't quote me, but I think that limit is 4096MBytes). Just my 2¢ for what it's worth.

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[Big_Ronnie]

I wouldnt go for anything less than 4bm L2 cache. Cache is the storage between your memory and hard drive, so the bigger the better.

My Pc has 1mb L2 Cache and my Sister's has 4mb, everything else is the same even the same make Pc but her's loads, tranfers file's more than twice as fast.
When i phone up the company they told me it was because of this.

I know the lastest Pc here in the UK are 8, 16 and even 32mb Cache because programs are getting hungryer and files are getting bigger...

Ronnie.

I need a faster PC for mainly video conversion, editting & scanning
photos. I hardly use office products.

1. Will buying from Costco better & cheaper than getting it directly
from Dell?

2. Does Dell dump their less popular/outdated models at Costco?

3. Does 1MB L2 cache versus 2MB make a huge difference?

I was looking at

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?prodid=11269506&whse=BC&topnav=&cat=4348&hierPath=84*56671*4348*&lang=en-US
and

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?prodid=11269672&whse=BC&topnav=&cat=4348&hierPath=84*56671*4348*&lang=en-US

 

[MagicCaptainMario]

I think the last post is talking about disk cache sizes, not L2 cache. Intel Processors (at least any I've seen) don't go past 8MB L2 cache and even those are usually shared among multiple cores.

L2 Cache is very important in some applications. I honestly don't know how important it would be in video editing, but my guess is that it won't show a great deal of improvement.

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Thanks,
Magic Captain Mario

 

[Big_Ronnie]

Here's a 16bm L2 Cache Prossesor... Ok i couldnt see a 32bm one but they wont be far off.

http://www.thefind.com/query.php?query=16mb+l2+cache+xeon+processor

Ronnie.

 

[JClaude]

Core2 Quad CPUs are outstanding for video editing, I use Sony Vegas Pro, A. Premiere and A. After Effects and the speed diference is, at time, stagering, specially when doing your final conversion. Most modern video editing solution ARE multi-thread able, so if you can, do get a quad core.

XP uses less ressources, yet it has less ressources itself, it is a fantastic OS, but Vista offers some advantages which make it a reasonable choice, specialy if you go the 64bit OS route which is a good idea (just make sure your scanner has drivers for it first). If you stick to 32bit don't bother with 4Gb or RAM, Vista and XP will only address 3Gb of RAM, you will be waisting 1Gb and the performance increase from 2Gb to 3Gb is neglectable.

If you partition your drive, do make your primary partition larger then 40Gb, because by the time your software is all installed, you have your OS pagefile, all your software's temps files (which as you know can get very big) and such, you get tight on space (40Gb would not get me started LOL), you start to get a lot of hard disk trashing and later, if you want to enlarge your partition, you get into a process that often results in problems. Drives a cheap, very cheap these days, get two 500Gb drives (dont RAID them), you will have peace of mind and room for expansion.
Listen to the backup advise, it is never too much

As for the purchase, you should mainly check warranties, because in case of a problem you willl be dealing with Dell direct anyway and if you order from Dell, check all you want online and CALL them on the phone, they will VERY often offer discounts (if you ask for them, be bold about it, it is your money) and sometimes you can save money and get parts upgraded for free, but be fiorm about your specs as they like to see if you upgrade at your own cost as well.

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Jean-Claude
http://www.opusmeum.com
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